The Weight of Wine

… or rather of winebottles. The wine itself, 75cl per bottle weighs, near as dammit, 0.75kg. But if you are thinking of picking up several cases on your continental holiday, it’s worth knowing how much stress you will be putting on your suspension.

As a public service I have weighed some wine bottles, empty, to help you decide how much you dare stack in the back of the car. The surprising results are as follows:

Modern, fairly thin bottle with a screwcap: 470gm

White Burgundy bottle with cork: 630gm

Champagne bottle: 890gm, heavier than the wine

So a case of 12 bottles containing 9kg of wine will put a load of at least 14.6kg on your suspension, more likely 16.6kg and perhaps as much as 19.7kg of which most will be glass. Even without champagne, four cases is equivalent to a 10½ stone person; 8 cases is two such people, 12 cases is three.

With two up front and 12 cases behind, you are carrying the equivalent of five people. In an average family car, go easy on corners and allow plenty of time for braking.

The only way to reduce this is to buy wine in a cubi or bag-in-box. You may even find a bag-in-box wine that will suffice as your house plonk, but you will have to sample a lot of poor wine to find it.